Wei Ding and Dalhoon Ahn leading in US Masters: Wei Ding and Dalhoon Ahn shook off their Tuesday losses in the US Masters Open to win their Round 6 games on Thursday morning, defeating Andy Liu and Ryan Li to set up a potentially decisive showdown between the two 5-1 players. Latest Masters crosstab here. Click here for the latest US Open crosstab. photo: Dalhoon Ahn, Ryan Li and Stephanie Yi 1P review the Ahn-Li game; photo by Chris Garlock

Rain helps boost Diehard turnout: This year’s Diehard Tournament — the traditional 4-round Day Off tournament — had 95 players, up from 90 last year. “The rain may have caused some people to revise their day off plans,” says TD Andy Olsen, “because many players registered at the last minute Wednesday morning.” The field attracted a good spread of players, from three 7 dans to many double-digit kyus.
Top section Winners: 1st: Tianyi Chen 6d; 2nd: David Cho 5d; 3rd: Ary Cheng 5d.
Additional prizes awarded to undefeated players: Eli Ferster 5k and Dave Whipp 7k.photo by Steven Burrall

Sibicky and Nyborg tops in 9×9: Nick Sibicky 4d is the dan division winner in the 9×9 tournament and the kyu division winner is Bethany Nyborg 18k.

“Why We Play” returns: E-Journal reporter Samantha Fede has been posting new “Why We Play” profiles in the Go Congress app social feed, like this one for Greg Steltenpohl 8k (left), who’s from Madison, WI and has been playing for two years. Greg’s favorite thing about go: “It’s kind of like programming in that you build a mental game/problem space and you get to navigate through that. I like doing that in programming and go. Solving a big puzzle. I also like to play games of go on my phone anytime I have a little time.” This is his first go congress, and he has already volunteered for next year’s Go Congress in Madison.